October 25, 2017

[A] lot of Russian officials seem to have had unfortunate accidents since the election. On Election Day itself, an officer in the New York consulate was found dead. The first explanation was that he fell off a roof. Then the Russians said he had a heart attack. On December 26, a former KGB agent thought to have helped compile the salacious Trump dossier was found dead in his car in Moscow. On February 20, the Russian Ambassador to the United Nations died suddenly, also from a heart attack. Russian authorities have also arrested a cybersecurity expert and two intelligence officials who worked on cyber operations and accused them of spying for the United States. All I can say is that working for Putin must be a stressful job.

If all this sounds unbelievable, I know how you feel. It’s like something out of one of the spy novels my husband stays up all night reading....

The first is that it involves the characters and language of a John Le Carré novel: a former British intelligence officer communing with shadowy Muscovites identified only by letters and detailing secret meetings in exotic places, hidden payments and illegal agreements to seize the American presidency.

The second is that the political stakes are high....

The third reason people have paid so much attention to it is the unproven assertion — generally described as “salacious” — that Trump was party to a particular event in a Moscow hotel room....

What can we even say about the mendacity of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Establishment? Should we add these Russian names to the long list of dead people associated with the Clintons? Does Hillary Clinton have ANY moral center?

I like how people ignore 4Chan, even though they proved they made up the story about the golden shower hookers to troll a NeverTrumper right-winger. Hillary paid good money to launder made-up slurs--give them provenance.

Oso Negro asks: What can we even say about the mendacity of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Establishment? Should we add these Russian names to the long list of dead people associated with the Clintons? Does Hillary Clinton have ANY moral center?

Exactly what I was thinking. And the longer the list, the fewer willing witnesses. Message: One doesn't mess with the Clintons---and live.

The story was that Trump paid hookers in 2013 to pee on the mattress Obama used during his Moscow trip in 2009. The story never involved a golden shower for Trump. It was so ridiculous that only a NeverTrumper like Chuck or his pal, John McCain, would fall for it.

May the TDS crowd all be shut up by this story airing. And the nevertrumpers as well. I'm not sure who is more contemptible.Is it too much to hope for some serious Club Fed time? Or at least a purge at Justice and FBI? A memory hole for the Clinton's??

My first thought was that the story is so incredible that Lecarre would dismiss it as too outlandish. The DNC and Clinton campaign pay the UK spook to mine information from Russian intelligence to assemble a dossier based upon bullshit (HUMINT in spook talk, which sounds much nicer). The dossier is crap but 'somehow" is leaked to Harry Reid, who pressures the FBI to release it, which will not release it because they are deciding whether to continue paying for this bullshit, at which point the FBI and CIA Director briefs the President and President-elect, and what a coincidence the stories appear in CNN and Buzzfeed the next day. The dossier is used as the basis for FISA warrants to wiretap people, and forms the backbone of an appointment of a Special Prosecutor, who by the way was implicated in the Uranium One deal with Russian nationals since he was FBI Director when FBI decided to bury the case and not let Congress or the group approving the sale know that the Russians involved were fraud and hucksters. And that is not even at the point that RUssian involved with the Fusion GPS UK spook enticed Trump Jr. into a meeting (which is looking more and more like a bad spook effort at creating a record to use during hte campaign).

Seriously, Lecarre would not have the nerve to make this up.

That said, is anyone surprised that HIllary CLinton is in the middle of such a hare brained scheme?

I well recall some commentators here at Althouse literally drunk with glee when the dossier came out. "Confirmed by the FBI! Impeach Trump now!"

And now that it's all revealed as a Hillary Campaign plot--we still have those same commentators calling for Trump to be impeached and lamentations about how he is ruining the nation; all while giving a pass to Democrat corruption and destruction of our "neutral" government that's supposed to be non-partisan.

But then, what's turning the entire Federal Government into an arm of the Democrat party as long as we can impeach Trump and enshrine Democrat control of our country forever!

Mark Steyn was in fine fettle on Tucke Carlson tonight saying that this Russia probe is getting to be like a Agatha Christie mystery, "Murder on the Siberia Express," where everybody, except Donald Trump has been conniving with "the Russians."

Lost in all the glee over Hillary (finally!) getting caught are two very serious questions. First, now that the FBI leadership is revealed to be complicit in a plot to purchase made-up opposition (to Trump) research, how far down does the rot extend and how do we fix this agency? Part two of that question is what parts of the FBI besides their fingerprint people in West Virginia can we keep? The second question is what about the CIA? How complicit have they been (keeping in mind that the lamentable James Clapper insisted that the CIA and his own ODNI signed off on the dossier). How deep does the rot extend and is that agency fixable?

Steyn also made a very serious charge: that some actions of the "intelligence community," such as Clapper sending Comey to "warn" Trump about the infamus dossier [French word for "file"], were made solely so that they could then be leaked to the media.

Considering that the middle management of these agencies have come up during the regimes of the people in question, nearly 20 years, the whole thing cannot be relied on. I recommend disbanding it entirely, its essential functions transferred to others, and mostly eliminated.

I wonder if Bob Woodward would have the balls to write about this aspect of the Obama / Hillary unholy alliance. It would be a nice bookend to a career that started with All the President's Men.

OTOH, I would find it possible to believe that Obama had kept his hands off all this, just like he pretty much did with the rest of his presidential responsibilities. It's been a hallmark of his career, ever since he became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review who left no paper trail except an unsigned article on abortion that he refused to fess us to until it was discovered.

"It was so ridiculous that only a NeverTrumper like Chuck or his pal, John McCain, would fall for it." Of course, it didn't keep the FBI from wanting more from the same source. The fact that they pursued such obvious BS confirms their bad faith, as if confirmation were needed.

One of the hard things about supporting Trump in the time just after the convention was that it was hard to know who was and how he would act. I believed he wanted to make America great again and that he would appoint conservative judges, fight the regulatory state and try for better trade deals. That isn't much to know. But now I think I know the man. He wins and the people who support him win with him. And I believe that he didn't just want to be President, I believe that he wanted to be a great President. I think he knew it would take greatness to take on the swamp and that no one but the ones who remembered America would support him. And we do - and no one knows how many of us there are or what country we are in.

Compare with Hillary/Bill. Sometimes xe wins, sometimes s/he loses but the people who support it always lose. They all end up ruined, - raped, in jail, dead, reputations ruined, exposed as sexual perverts or predators, exposed as liars, thieves, exposed as twisting justice, journalism, foreign policy - whatever they had of value bent, twisted, destroyed, by themselves so they suffer the consequences and Hillary walks on. And more fools flock on board the Ship of Fools.

I wouldn't have thought Hillary! would want to play the "lots of mysterious deaths around that guy" card, but then again during the campaign she was happy to play the "lots of disrespectful acts towards women from that guy" card.

I suppose if she engaged in very much honest self-reflection, she'd have hanged herself decades ago.

Wildswan - The old analogy made back in the mid 90s was that the Clintons were like the Buchanans in Gatsby. That it was the people around them whose lives were ruined, while they sailed on. That was 20yrs+ ago!

OTOH, I would find it possible to believe that Obama had kept his hands off all this, just like he pretty much did with the rest of his presidential responsibilities. It's been a hallmark of his career, ever since he became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review who left no paper trail except an unsigned article on abortion that he refused to fess us to until it was discovered.

10/25/17, 8:11 PM

ESPN is a 24 hour channel so I'm pretty sure Obama had nothing do "actually do" with it.

Whatever the Clintons have done wrong they always accuse their opponents of doing. Always. It's a Clinton trademark.So is it going to come out that one of the Clintons was paying to get peed on by Russian prostitutes in Obama's hotel bed?

However, let care was. Selling this tripe to Ben mcintire in the times. They seemed to glean part of this scenario from Alex drydens red to black series, particularly when a Luxembourg official is being over Einstein like behavior. But its not as plausible as say Jason Matthews 'red sparrow' soon to be a terrible film with Jennifer Lawrence, she is supposed to be a brunette Russian ballerina, who joins the security service.

Furthermore it turns out, thAT the other half of thrvgrishenko sandwich, crowdstrike was also represented by the same firm as fusion, Perkins and coie, although probably nit the same partner, mark elias, now part of the soros PAC priorities USA.

Why were the Obama administration, Clinton, and DNC, so anxious to prevent a political outsider from holding the keys to the kingdom?

What warranted a multi-year cover-up, massive mainstream press propaganda, disenfranchisement of Americans, and collusion with foreign agents, that would surely place all of these domestic actors in jeopardy?

Of course the dossiers real provenance goers half a world away, to graham greenes 'our man in havana' wirmold the vacuum cleaner salesman shanghaied into being a British operative, who made up a list of fake agents, which increasingly looked real

Related to the title of this post, can anyone suggest a recent spy novel that is salacious? My reading tends towards the nonfiction, so perhaps I’m just reading the wrong ones when I venture into spy novels. Or perhaps, as usual, Bill Clinton’s wife doesn’t know what she’s talking about. At this point, what difference does her husband’s reading habits make?

Well the late Gerald devilliers was someone who let us say would give laslo a fair amount of material, two of his last novels were recently translated to English. 'Red sparrow' because of the subject matter takes a more clinical view.

Is anyone surprised that Hillary Clinton is in the middle of such a hare brained scheme?

It is often the sign of hysteria when allusions to the downfall of Richard Nixon surface. Gate this and gate that. Nevertheless it seems there is a parallel to the Watergate affair that is psychologically revealing. Just one year ago, virtually to the minute, it was assumed by all "informed sources" and the "well-connected" that Hillary was on the cusp of an historic beatdown, an electoral college landslide to revival Dick Nixon's demolition of George McGovern in 1972. (BTW, how did Althouse vote that year?)

The result in the 1972 election wasn't a surprise. The polls were more accurate back then. People were more willing to reply to pollsters' interrogatives, and the opinion measuring organizations were more likely to recruit dispassionate poll takers rather than partisan blockheads unable to interview the deplorables objectively. Nixon was bound to cruise to re-election. There was no obvious need to uncover the darkest secrets of the McGovern campaign, and yet the infamous burglary was planned, executed, and in due course sealed Nixon's doom. Dean, Haldemann, Ehrlichman, and the rest should have gone on a different vacation instead of their fishing expedition. Their boss was going to win. They all believed that wholeheartedly. No need to gild the lily. Yet, the True Believer is compelled to punish the unbeliever, the sinner, the enemy. It wasn't enough to defeat George McGovern. He and all his myrmidons had to be destroyed. Hence the break-in.

The same psychology drives Hillary Clinton. She was supremely confident of victory last year. She knew it, and all the hangers-on and media creatures who flirted around her like elfin sprites around Gloriana knew it. (Election night came as a total shock. Clinton turned to white-knuckling vodka rather than give the concession speech she didn't bother to write.) They were every bit as confident as Nixon's grim lieutenants. But just as in 1972 victory wasn't enough. Trump had to be destroyed. Thus the collusion with the Russians.

The differences with Watergate are also revealing. The break-in at the Watergate Hotel was discovered and reported by the Washington Post before the election, and the press was almost as hostile to RMN as they have been to DJT and had been since Nixon championed Whittaker Chambers against Alger Hiss. The probe into the Watergate affair would continue vigorously whether Nixon won or was defeated in the polls. Yet, had Hillary won last November we would have never heard a peep about this outrage. Obama, the FBI, the MSM, the Russians would have all kept silent. The corpses would yet sleep mutely in their hidden graves, but for Hillary Clinton's fatal nemesis, she own sanctimonious idiocy. She lost. Destroying Trump was never a project a sound mind would conceive, but after the fact? A soundly reasoning mind would conclude that Hillary's best policy would be to take the drubbing as gracefully as possible and let Trump's presumed incompetence ruin him. Then in 2020 Hillary could campaign on the slogan I Told You So, like Ralph Kramden's long suffering Alice writ large. But no, she had to reverse the charges. The Russians did it! she and her sycophant press mavens chorused, when in truth the Russians did it for her and uranium, and not for Donald Trump. If Hillary would have just kept her festering gob tightly shut, none of us peons would have ever been the wiser.

Not sure I am keeping up...are we now to think that Rosenstein, Comey, and Mueller cooked up the whole independent counsel schtick (Comey brings attention to the fake dossier, Rosenstein use the attention as an excuse to appoint Mueller IC...) not to get Trump but specifically to cover up their own actions re Russians and Clintons back when they thought Hillary would be the next President?

@Quaestor in 72 there was real and legitimate reason to believe that elements in or connected to the DNC were involved with Soviet backed groups. The Watergate guys were wrong on the legality of what they were doing but right about the connections they were looking for.

A lot of Russian officials seem to have had unfortunate accidents since the election.

You know, the more I think about it the worse Hillary is. This sentence, for example, is particularly rich coming from Clinton: it's long been a crazy right-wing meme that an awful lot of people close to Bill & Hillary Clinton have ended up dead. I mean it's an actual documented thing: Wiki "Clinton Body Count". That theory (that people the Clintons find inconvenient seem to die mysteriously) even came up during the last election when DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered.

Now responsible journalists, of course, won't tolerate any discussion of these wild conspiracy theories. Anyone mentioning them is instantly labeled a kook, an extremist, etc. Fair enough, right?

But! Here's Hillary Clinton doing pretty much the exact same thing! It's certainly known that the Russian intel services take people out. Our intel services almost certainly take people out, too (certainly our intel services working with our military do--just ask President Peace Prize Drone War about that one). But here, in print, Clinton engages in exactly the kind of speculation that we're told is irresponsible when it's directed at her!

So is it ok to speculate about possible murderous conspiracies when many people die under suspicious circumstances and those deaths seem to benefit a specific person, or not? I mean, if it's ok for Hillary to do then shouldn't it be ok for others to do (about Hillary)?